green jobs

First solar power firm Solyndra shut down, putting the Department of Energy on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars in loans. Then Beacon power - another company that had benefited from the same program - filed for bankruptcy.

But Carol Murphy, executive director of the Alliance for Clean Energy New York, says the local green energy sector has taken these high-profile failures in stride.

"If you look nationally it's not just green energy companies," she argues. "People have been jumping on these stories now, but for any startup company there's a high rate of failure."

A new report out from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) declares the compact between nine northeastern and mid-Atlantic states to cap and then trade their carbon emissions a resounding success.

To review, here's how RGGI (pronounced affectionately by those in the know as "Reggie") works. Power companies agree to caps on how much pollution they can make. And to emit that pollution, they have to buy the right, by bidding on "carbon credits" (sold by the ton), at auctions. Companies don't want to pony up the cash, so they're incentivized to cut their emissions. The cash from the auctions gets used on green projects that reduce carbon, and total atmospheric carbon drops. Theoretically.